In Bed Quiet Time
The light goes out and the body should slowly shift down to low energy, yet thoughts keep spinning and the line between awake and sleepy is hard to feel. The steps below give the wind-down a soft, recognisable shape.
♂Resting in bed
A boy lies in a bed under a blue blanket with a thought bubble showing a moon and star above him.
About this visual support
In the dark the body has to do something it cannot be forced into: let go of the day's pace and slide over into sleep. For many children this is exactly where it gets hard, because thoughts keep spinning long after the lamp is off, and the very feeling of getting sleepy is vague and hard to trust.
Quiet time in bed benefits from having a visible shape even when the room is dark. Visual support that the child has looked at before the light goes out becomes an inner order to follow: lie still, breathe slowly, think of a calm place, close the eyes. When the steps are familiar, the brain does not have to track what happens next, and then it switches off more easily.
A concrete tip: tie each picture to something the body already feels, such as breathing in as the shoulders drop, so winding down becomes something the child does with the body rather than only thinks about. If you want the pictures alongside a gentle sleep timer, Routined is free to try for fourteen days.